That moment I realized my 'recycling' was probably going to a landfill

I was sorting my plastic yogurt cups like a good little citizen in Portland for years. Then last month I visited our local waste facility for a school field trip with my kid. The guide pointed out that most black plastic containers can't be sorted by their optical scanners anyway. I was just tossing them in the blue bin thinking I was helping, but they were likely getting pulled out and trashed. Now I'm checking every single container number and avoiding black plastic altogether. Has anyone else found out their local recycling program accepts way less than they thought?

3 comments

3 Comments

allen.ivan1mo ago

Nah, black plastic gets sorted fine at most Portland facilities.

max_ross1mo ago

Wait, do you actually know that for sure? I looked into this a bunch after the same field trip and talked to a guy who used to work at the sorting facility near the Pearl. He said the optical scanners just see black as a void signal, so it literally can't tell if it's plastic or not. A lot of it gets kicked out as trash. It's not that the machines can't sort it at all, it's that they can't tell what it is, so they err on the side of tossing it. I even switched to just rinsing and reusing glass jars for my yogurt now, way less headache.

nguyen.tara29d ago

Heard the same thing from a buddy who works at Recology up in Seattle. Said black plastic is basically invisible to their optical sorters.